Rated R - Running Time: 1:42 - Released 9/25/03
EXPIRATION
Rated R - Running Time: 1:42 - Released 9/25/03
From out of Montreal comes Sunchaser Pictures, a quiet little
production company that may be destined to make a big splash in
the near future, if its first feature, Expiration, is any
indication. Written, directed, edited, and starred in by 23-year-old
Gavin Heffernan, and populated mostly by college students and
various non-professional actors, Expiration is an impressive
debut for this young group of friends who, operating on the most
meager of shoestring budgets, are mostly donating their time,
doubling and tripling up on duties in front of and behind the
camera between term papers and final exams. While its production
values and general sense of style are somewhat lacking (it was
shot on digital video and apparently edited on Heffernan’s
own PC), its clever timeline, conversational writing style, and
occasional moments of cinematic genius serve to counteract the
technical flaws. The film exudes raw talent on both sides of the
lens and serves as an unwitting document of the kind of purity
of vision embodied by artists at the beginnings of their careers,
before fame and fortune have begun to affect their judgment or
their creative output.
The film takes place over the course of one night in Montreal,
a night which proves to be especially fateful for its three main
characters. First we have Sam (Heffernan), a twenty-something
college grad and valedictorian of his class who, while desirous
of realizing his potential, also maintains the good fight to be
a nice guy. After discovering that his female best friend and
one-time sex partner Niki (Erin Simkin) is pregnant, he decides
the right thing to do is propose to her, although they don’t
exactly click as a couple. After a semi-romantic dinner out (during
which he fails to come to the point), he stops by a convenience
store and is one of several victims of an armed robbery. Another
such victim is a smart, attractive, but jaded girl named Rachel
(Janet Lane), whose life once had promise but has taken an unfortunate
turn, resulting in her employment as a drug runner for a dealer
who found her on her worst day and exploited the situation. Rachel
had stopped in the store on her way to deliver a large parcel
of heroin to an eccentric but high-paying customer, and, of course,
her package and Sam’s engagement ring are among the items
stolen. Realizing that the absence of those items could seriously
affect their lives from this day forward, Sam and Rachel decide
they must work together to track down the crook and get their
stuff back.
Meanwhile Niki, who had fallen asleep in Sam’s car, wakes
to find him missing and his note blown away. Thinking she has
been ditched, she tries to find her way home through dangerous
neighborhoods with her makeup smeared, her clothes mussed, and
her mouth tasting like red wine and morning sickness. Finally
she is noticed by a middle-aged prostitute (Denise Depass) who
offers to drive her home but ends up leading her in yet another
unexpected direction. And as all our co-protagonists make their
way through their respective paths, they encounter a multitude
of characters and situations, some pathetic, some scary, some
mildly humorous, and some bordering on the absurd, all leading
them toward dawn, toward destiny, and toward some major decisions
about their lives.
This is the kind of movie which would probably take several
viewings to fully understand, but that’s just the kind I
like. With its alternately gritty and breathtaking cinema (by
Sebastian Grobys and Ben Dally) and its dreamlike, stream-of-consciousness
construction, all to the strains of the distinctively understated
original score by John Day, it reminds me of David Lynch’s
2001 puzzler Mulholland Drive,
which is one of my favorite movies to date. The acting is somewhat
inconsistent—the leading players are adequate (Lane, who
also served as the film’s art director, is especially effective,
and Heffernan’s own fish-out-of-water performance is reminiscent
of Topher Grace in Traffic;
almost too straight to be so comfortable in this situation), but
some of the supporting cast members’ work betrays an immaturity
of style. Moreover, Heffernan’s direction seems occasionally
to undermine his own subtly powerful screenplay—there are
scenes where more emotion could be used to make characters seem
more real, more viscerally affected by the cruel events acting
on their lives. Yes, these are people who have become used to
strain, but our reaction in a way depends on theirs; seeing someone
reach the breaking point can trigger a similar response in the
viewer. One gets the sense that being a rookie on a tight budget
and with a low expense account, Heffernan was reticent to ask
too much from his cast members. The result is a potentially affecting
concept with a sometimes sterile execution.
But despite the budget- and inexperience-related flaws of this production, it still remains leagues better than 90% of what is churned out by Hollywood by respected professionals and makes millions every weekend at the box office. It is heartening to see such integrity, and such an ability to exploit it, present in the next generation of filmmakers. But young artists with integrity are a dime a dozen; the trick, of course, is to remain true to that integrity after the big bucks and big offers start flooding in. Heffernan and company may well have that challenge to deal with in the next few years; I wish them good luck in keeping the dream, the art, and the idealism alive. ****
